Letters: Years AGO

An event of far-reaching astrophysical consequences occurred at White Sands Proving
Ground on October 10th,

when the ultraviolet spectrum
of the sun at wave lengths
shorter than 3400 angstroms was obtained
from a V-2 rocket at a height of 88 kilometers. The limit of the spectrograph was 1100
angstroms. It is this region of the suns spectrum which is normally absorbed by the
ozone in the upper atmosphere.
This experiment flown by the Naval Research Laboratory marked the beginning of
modern space-age astronomy. However, not
until 1968 was a major satellite, the Orbiting
Astronomical Observatory, successfully orbited to study in detail ultraviolet emissions of
celestial objects.
January 1972
Information obtained during an Aerobee rocket ascent
on June 14, 1969, reveals that
the continuous spectrum of
[GX 340+0] closely matches
that radiated by a blackbody
of approximately 15,000,000 Kelvin. This is
the first X-ray source whose blackbody nature is established with some confidence.
From these observations it was proposed
that GX 340+0 might be a neutron star, a
highly condensed body in which a mass of
roughly 12 to less than 2 12 Suns is packed into
a volume only 10 kilometers or so across. The
first such object to be discovered was the pulsar CP 1919+21 in 1967.
In November the planet Mars acquired
two man-made satellites: the American craft
Mariner 9 on the 13th and the Soviet Mars 2
ship on the 27th. These were joined on December 2nd by another Soviet craft, Mars 3.
The first successful Mars mission was the
Mariner 4 flyby in 1965. Mars 2 was the first
(partially) successful Soviet mission; its lander
failed but its orbiter transmitted data. If all
goes well, Mars will gain another trio of visitors in 1997, two landers and an orbiter.
Eclipse 72 participants will view totality
from the luxury liner Olympia. To avoid frequent fog associated with the cold coastal
waters, this vessel will steam roughly 1,000
miles east of New York City.
This tour, the brainchild of Phil Sigler, inaugurated todays immensely popular sport of
eclipse cruising. On that voyage, meteorologist
Edward M. Brooks proved the value of a
ships mobility for successful viewing by finding a tiny hole amid extensive clouds covering
the North Atlantic.
Sky & Telescope January 1997
the signal from continuum sources will be

strongest in the S II image, represented
by red in the color picture, explaining
why all the stars appear unnaturally red.
However, this does not explain why
the emission nebulosity appears yellow.
In published spectra of regions in M16
near the area shown, the hydrogen-alpha
line is more than 10 times stronger than
the S II line and more than four times
stronger than the O III line. In normal,
broadband, threecolor pictures of the
nebula the dominant red of hydrogen
alpha is diluted with blue hydrogen beta,
blue-green O III, and scattered light from
dust to give M16s familiar magenta
shade. But Hester uses hydrogen alpha
as the green channel in his color picture,
and that, with a contribution from O III
in the blue channel, should have made
the nebulosity quite blue-green. I suspect
a bit of creative color balancing was used
to give a more realistic effect. That is fine,
provided the image is not claimed to be
true color, and Hester made no such
claim. Such processing does not detract in
any way from the value of the image as a
scientific document, but it is hardly accurate to call it a close approximation to
true color.
The other point that Hester mentions
in his letter is the way the eye and photography see such nebulae. He is right
that they are shown in many photographs as vividly red because many are
I read with interest the correspondence

between Don Kurtz and Jeff Hester concerning the color balance of Hesters M16
image (August issue, page 8). Let me say
at once that this is the finest astronomical image I have ever seen, and I have no
desire to diminish the wonderful achievement by Hester and his colleagues.
Although the color balance for this
image was chosen to be in some sense
realistic, it is not possible to achieve
anything approaching realism with the
filter set and detector used (the Hubble
Space Telescopes Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2). Of course, the narrowband filters were selected to obtain the
best scientific data, and they are not
ones you would choose for a true-color
picture that contains both continuum
sources such as stars and the narrow
emission lines of nebulae.
According to the paper by Hester and
his colleagues (Astronomical Journal,
June 1996) exposure times for the oxygen (O III), hydrogen-alpha, and sulfur
(S II) bands were the same 2,200 seconds. The O III and hydrogen-alpha filters have similar transmission characteristics, but the S II filter has a bandpass
twice as wide. Also, the CCD is twice as
sensitive to the red part of the spectrum, where S II is located, as it is to the
blue-green O III region. This means that
4980 5000 5020 5040

WAVELENGTH (angstroms)
H-alpha
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Color Film
r
Blu
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1996 Sky Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.
7000
INCREASING
TRANSMISSION
January 1947
Illuminating a Complex Issue
INCREASING
TRANSMISSION
AGO
INCREASING
TRANSMISSION
YEARS
LETTERS
INCREASING SENSITIVITY
50&25
6660 6700 6740 6780

Above: The bandpasses

covered by the O III, S II,
and hydrogen-alpha filters
on the Hubble Space Telescopes Wide Field and
Planetary Camera 2. The
color of each filters curve
indicates how that band is
represented in the HST
M16 image. Left: How a
typical color film divides
up the spectrum. While
color film is optimized to
reproduce the appearance
of objects in nature, the
three HST filters were
chosen to obtain optimal
scientific data.
dominated by hydrogen-alpha emission.

But not all are. My picture of the Orion
Nebula, for example, shows its inner regions to be yellow because I use a threecolor process that deliberately gives
roughly equal weight to red, green, and
blue light (S&T: November 1981, page
414). The green light of OIII is much
stronger than the red of hydrogen alpha
in the inner part of the nebula, but hydrogen alpha dominates farther out.
Mix green and red light, and you get
yellow. This is unlike color film, which is
not designed for photographing nebulae
and has an uneven response across the
visible spectrum. It emphasizes the red
and largely ignores the blue-green emissions, making most nebulae appear artificially red.
However, telescopic observers of the
Orion Nebula consistently report the
brightest parts as greenish, though I
have never seen it so. Observers are accurately reporting what they see, but
light levels are so low that their eyes are
working on the threshold of color vision,
and the eye is not very sensitive to the
far-red wavelength of hydrogen alpha.
They therefore see only the color to
which the eye is most sensitive green.
If we could magically turn up the sensitivity of our eyes by some large factor
we would see the yellows and reds in the
Orion Nebula. But we see the nebulosity of M16 only as red-magenta, because
its light is dominated by hydrogen alpha,
not oxygen emission.
DAVID MALIN
Anglo-Australian Observatory
P.O. Box 296
Epping, NSW 2121, Australia
[email protected]
Astronomy and a
Christmas Classic
Readers may recall that in the wellknown 1946 film Its a Wonderful Life
the opening sequence involves a conversation between angels, who are represented as galaxies in the sky. Only on
my latest (nth!) viewing of this film did
I notice that the pictured galaxies greatly resembled Stephans Quintet, a noteworthy group of interacting galaxies.
After some checking I discovered that
the filmmakers indeed used a photograph of Stephans Quintet, with NGC
7320 (first angel) talking to NGC 7318A
and B (second angel). They were later
10
Sky & Telescope January 1997
Software Accuracy
NGC 7320 (upper right) and NGC 7318A

and B (center) in Pegasus have speaking
roles in Its a Wonderful Life. Mount Wilson Observatory photograph. South is up.
joined by Angel Second Class Clarence,

who is portrayed only as a foreground
star, perhaps due to the difference in
rank. Presumably the photograph was
obtained from Mount Wilson Observatory, but I do not know why this particular image was chosen or which astronomer (if any) was involved.
Later in the film, after the high school
dance (at about midnight), George and
Mary romantically view a full Moon right
at the horizon. I trust that no astronomer
advised them on this scene.
WOODRUFF T. SULLIVAN III
Dept. of Astronomy
University of Washington
Seattle, WA 98195
The 1999 Total Solar Eclipse

On August 11, 1999, a total solar eclipse
will be visible across parts of Europe
(S&T: August 1996, page 48). Its maximum duration (2m 23s) can be viewed
from Romania. On the centerline is the
Astronomical Institute of the Romanian
Academy, which has the only major observatory within the path of totality.
Romanian astronomers have begun
preparations for this event, involving
both the scientific community and the
general public, and we have founded the
International Association ECLIPSA 99
for this purpose. Anyone interested in
more information should write to the
address below.
MAGDA STAVINSCHI
Astronomical Institute
of the Romanian Academy
P.O. Box 28
R-75212 Bucharest, Romania
1996 Sky Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.
I read with interest the article in the

September issue on software accuracy
(page 85). I encountered problems similar to those described when I tried to
use my sky-simulation software to duplicate the lunar occultation of Aldebaran
on the evening of March 9, 1497, which
was viewed by Copernicus when he was
a student in Bologna, Italy.
On my monitor the Moon passed more
than 1 arcminute north of the bright star
without eclipsing it. Two other programs
gave similar results. Before doubting Copernicus I recognized the reason: proper
motion. Aldebaran shifts in declination
by 0.19 arcsecond per year, which becomes nearly 1.6 arcminutes over 500
years. Programs that dont accurately account for the stars motion fail to reproduce the occultation.
The occultation, by the way, is the first
certain observation by the Polish astronomer. It is reported in his work De revolutionibus. Almost exactly 500 years later
the event will repeat itself, when the
Moon occults Aldebaran on the evening
of March 14, 1997.
CHRISTIAN PINTER
Gerichtsgasse 1c/6
A-1210 Vienna, Austria
I found the article on software accuracy interesting but a bit incomplete and
therefore somewhat misleading.
The ephemeris-creation process is a
major scientific endeavor requiring many
years of expert attention. The article gives
the impression that all of the calculations
are done within one of the relatively
small programs that were compared. In
reality, those programs contain either interpolations of an existing ephemeris or
formulas approximating one. These precomputed ephemerides are produced by
numerically integrating the gravitational
equations that govern the motions of
solar-system bodies a time- consuming
process that is orders of magnitude more
complex than simply producing an apparent position from a given ephemeris. To
compute planetary positions over the past
few millenniums requires many hours on
even the fastest PCs or workstations.
E. MYLES STANDISH JR.
Director, Planetary Ephemeris
Development
Mail Stop 301-150
Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Pasadena, CA 91109

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An event of far-reaching astrophysical consequences occurred at White Sands Proving

Ground on October 10th,

Sky & Telescope January 1997

the signal from continuum sources will be

I read with interest the correspondence

4980 5000 5020 5040

1996 Sky Publishing Corp. All rights reserved.

Illuminating a Complex Issue

6660 6700 6740 6780

Above: The bandpasses

dominated by hydrogen-alpha emission.

Sky & Telescope January 1997

NGC 7320 (upper right) and NGC 7318A

joined by Angel Second Class Clarence,

The 1999 Total Solar Eclipse

I read with interest the article in the

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